M. PASTEUR'S INSTITUTE.
[To TER EDITOR Or rya " SPECTATOR."1
SIR,—When, in my letter of last week upon Pasteur's failures,
alluded to his proposed Institute, I knew that it would be something hideous and revolting, and the following is a picture on a small scale (given within the last day or two) of some of its operations ; and since the medical profession does not appear
to be denouncing it, are we not justified in looking upon it as a picture also of scientific medicine in the nineteenth century ?—
" A most extraordinary museum has just been opened in the Rue Vanquelin. It is difficult to say whether it should beet be called a museum, or a factory, or a farm, or a menagerie. It is, in fact, all four combined and grouped together for a purpose hitherto untried, and presenting an appearance hitherto unparalleled. These are the new head-quarters of M. Pasteur, and here are to be found cow-houses, sheep-folds, fowl-walks, rabbit-hutches, and dog-kennels" [these last two places containing the animals that are purposely maddened for the inoculation of the others]. "They are all, moreover, fully occupied. On one floor is a laboratory, where the vaccine soups and preparations are made up. Above it a museum, where specimens connected with the new cure aro exhibited. There are operating-rooms and rooms for post-mortem investigations and dissecting purposes. Two of the kennels are devoted to dogs in various interesting stages of early or advanced rabies. Hen-cholera is communicated, watched, and cured in the fowl house. The cattle exhibit various stages of vaccination. Human beings have also their provided quarter. A spacious waiting-room is set apart for patients, who troop in daily in picturesque groups, according to the French Press, representing all nationalities. In the meantime, the great savant occupies the former quarters of the Pasteur Institute in the Rue d'Ulm, and devotes himself in dignified seclusion to scientific research."
The "great charlatan" sounds a better and truer designation, and it is what many of the first doctors in Paris are proclaiming Pasteur to he. And what of those who, by their encourage- ment of all this folly and cruelty, are insuring for a little while its continuance, and this notwithstanding the fact that the inoculation of animals, after having been introduced into Ger- many, has been prohibited by the Reichstag on account of the mischief it was doing, and that of Pasteur's human patients five have died of hydrophobia within the last month ? It must be ignorance of these facts that makes continuing faith in Pasteur possible, and every word that is published that shall help to remove this ignorance will help to put a atop to the atrocious exhibition of dogs in every stage of artificially pro- duced madness.—I am, Sir, &c., S. W.
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